140 REPORT—1868. 
Wadela plateau. With the exception of clumps of kosso and juniper round the 
churches, Wadela plain is without either trees or shrubs. The scenery is wild and 
desolate, not unlike that of the interior of the Orkney Islands. The Jidda river 
separates the Wadela from the Dalanta plateaux. The height, where the river 
separates them, is about 9200 feet, and it seems evident that they formed 
once a single mass of columnar basalt, through which the Jidda, in the course of 
ages, has gradually worn its way down to a depth of 3500 feet, carrying countless 
millions of tons of earth away to fertilize the plains of the Lower Nile. The flora 
on the Dalanta plateau is very English, consisting of dog-roses, the nettle, yellow and 
purple Compositze, clover, and plantain. he ravine of the Bechilo, on its southern 
edge, is even deeper than that of the Jidda, being only 5640 feet above the sea. 
To the south of the Bechilo rises the Magdala system, or knot, of mountains. 
Magdala itself is a mass of columnar basalt, with scarped perpendicular sides, and 
with a plateau on the top, about two miles long by half a mile wide. It it 9050 
feet above the sea-level. Besides Magdala, the system is composed of the peak of 
Selassie and the plateau of Fala, the three being connected by saddles at lower 
elevations. They are not in a line, but form an angle, of which Selassie is the 
apex and Magdala and Fala the two legs. The Magdala district is simply a portion 
of the great basaltic mass of Dalanta, which has been cut up and furrowed by the 
action of water during many ages, leaving the hills as isolated bits of the original 
plateau. 
On the North-East Turkish Frontier and its Tribes. 
By W. Girrorp PareRave. 
The region treated of by the author was the mountainous district bordering 
Russian Georgia, and lying parallel to the range of the Caucasus—a journey 
through which he performed in the summer of 1867. The country is diversified by 
fertile valleys, admirably adapted for human habitation and increase. An unex- 
ected sight met his view in these remote places—a teeming population, which 
find been gathered tozether during the last few years, and which presented signs 
of the formation of a new nationality. The difficulty of access to the valleys, 
owing to the nature of the mountain passes by which they are reached, gives them 
the advantages of natural fortifications, and they are well provided with all the 
inhabitants could require, either for successful defence or to gather forces and to 
issue forth against anenemy. Fifty years ago this part of the world was thinly 
peopled, hardly exceeding the proportion of ten or fifteen inhabitants to the 
square mile; at the present moment it is teeming with life, consisting of emi- 
grant Turcoman tribes, Kurds, Georgians and Circassians; some haying crossed 
the frontier to escape from the overwhelming tyranny of Russia, and others 
driven from their homes by the results of Persian anarchy. The author’s journey 
commenced at Kars, accompanied by the Pacha and a numerous cavalcade of 
chieftains and their followers, who wished to manifest by this display their 
respect for a British official; the author’s course, in a straight line, was about 
140 miles, but the ground travelled over was nearly double that distance, as he 
diverged to the right and the left to visit the various places. The scenery 
throughout was most magnificent and beautiful, far surpassing anything seen in 
Switzerland. All the chieftains and governors in the region belong to one ruling 
family, which, by intermarriage with fresh arrivals, and forming an advantageous 
admixture of races, has continually produced men of good sense and great power 
in action. The intellectual and physical superiority which the men of this family 
dispiay was, doubtless, due to their Georgian mothers, the chiefs having mostly — 
married women of this race, who are still distinguished for their beauty. From 
every height the author crossed, new vistas were opened out of valleys dotted with 
flourishing villages full of new white houses, surrounded generally with a ring of 
gardens and a much wider circle of outer cultivation. One Pasha told the author 
that in his father’s time there were fifteen villages; they now numbered eighty- 
three, some with twenty, some with sixty, and some with two hundred houses. 
He also explained whence the population came. The Turcomans, whose country 
has been conquered by the Russians, are discontented with the Russian Goyern- 
